Now that Apple has announced its entry into the fitness-tracking wearable space with the Apple Watch, Jawbone, the makers of the UP and UP24 activity trackers, has introduced a version of its UP iPhone app that works without requiring the fitness band. Instead, the new version of Jawbone’s health and fitness iPhone app adds support for Apple’s HealthKit feature and Health app on iOS 8 making UP’s software for tracking activity and sleep as well as logging meals more valuable to iPhone users wanting to fill the new Health app with data.Since the iPhone 5s, step tracking has been a built-in functionality to the iPhone (and Health can read that data on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus), and Jawbone’s UP app for iPhone packs in a number of other useful features for fitness and health tracking.
For instance, iPhone users can set alerts with UP for specific activities like taking medicine, starting a workout, or preparing for bed. UP also helps monitor weight and other information with goals and social aspects to the app as well.
Jawbone’s UP app doesn’t stop at just using Apple’s HealthKit to connect with other apps. Jawbone offers up its own way of connecting with other apps, some of which aren’t exactly health-focused, for turning UP into a robust data hub of sorts.
Apps like MyFitnessPal and RunKeeper can communicate with UP to share data, even without HealthKit and Health, but apps like the Automatic, the smart driving assistant, can also include travel data in UP.
Another activity tracking wearable, Fitbit, made its app work without requiring a hardware accessory last year when Apple introduced step tracking with the iPhone 5s.
An update with Health integration to Jawbone’s existing UP app for UP/UP24 wristband users is also available now.
UP for iPhone is available for free on the App Store.
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Preparation for the iWatch obviously, at which point the band will either be scaled back considerably (for non-iOS users) or discontinued entire
Oops!
“entirely”
It should be noted that this new Jawbone UP app is appearing separate from the original app that requires a band. I am guessing there will be convergence between the two apps eventually.
Great news.
Let`s wait for some convergence between the two apps, there’s no point in having two apps….
I bought an UP24 a couple of months ago, and I really like it. The app is quite good. The only thing it lacks now that iOS 8 has been released is Health integration. Which I was really looking forward to, as there are a few other health-related apps I use, and I wanted to see them all working together in Health.
But instead of updating the app that is used by their paying customers, Jawbone has created a new app that doesn’t require their hardware and is free. Now, I’m glad people are getting this nicely-designed app for free and I hope lots of people use it. But I really don’t like how they’ve treated their current customers by not allowing them to take advantage of the Health app as well.
There’s so much noise with various apps trying to integrate with Apple’s Healtkit and the Health app. Can someone please name the apps that add a functionality to the Apple’s Health app rather than duplicate its functionality and to use the “integration” to get information from Healthkit rather than to contribute information to Healthkit? The apps that do not require another device like a fitness band. Setting alerts for taking medicine or going to bed? How stupid is this? I can set a reminder to take medicine in the iOS reminders app. Why in the world would I want to use Jawbone UP for this?
I have been using the Jawbone UP24 since it came out and would love for them to update the app. I often plug in my phone at work which means its not tracking my movement, whereas the UP24 is on my arm all the time. They recently updated the band so it has 14 days between charges. While its great that they allow users without the band to track using the motion coprocessor, they should develop a way to select the UP band as the primary source of tracking so that the movement data is coming from the band into the Health app on the phone.
Additionally, the UP band offers reminders when you are stationery for too long, reminding you to get up and move, the medicine reminder is just another functionality, though since the band doesn’t have a screen, Im not sure how effective it would be to use both of them.
Another plus for the band is the Sleep monitoring data that is collected, and that information is pushed into the Health app.
it seems that fitbit has removed the ability to use it without a separate fitbit device.
Interesting, thanks for noting.
Still works for me.
hrmm.. I really wish they’d change the wording on this confusing app.
“Not Required” is not the same as “Not compatible with”..
I assumed that this new app would work with or without my UP band.. the difference being if i had an up band it would get the data from it rather than from the phone.
So now Jawbone has two apps in the store (with identical names for added confusion).. one works with the Up Bands but won’t sync data to HealthKit and the other syncs data to HealthKit but isn’t compatible with their Up Bands.
I’d like to find out who is in charge of product over there and get to the bottom of this ham-fisted lunacy.
Jawbone has since shared that the wristband version of UP on iPhone with HealthKit support is making its way through App Store review. Updated to correct.
Its available now, I just updated it.